Determining Economic Impact

In many cases, you will know what has been filmed and how many production days were involved, but you won’t know how much money was spent during this time. In order to assign a monetary figure to these kinds of projects, you will need to develop some guidelines for your area. The AFCI Economic Impact Tracking System will be helpful in this regard.

The AFCI Tracking System was created using information for production in the United States and may not be relevant to all countries or all situations. You can easily adapt it to your community by using it as a template for determining how much the average expenditure is for your area for each type of production. If you can convince several companies of different types and sizes to give you accurate spending information, you will be able to use that information to determine the average amount spent in any given category.

Consistency is essential when trying to determine economic impact numbers. In the absence of actual data, you will need to make an educated guess about how much was spent. Having your own standardized formula will remove some of the guesswork and help you make informed estimates. In addition, if asked about how you arrived at your totals, you will have an established, credible document to support your work. Finally, by applying the same formula each year, you will have a more accurate picture of whether or not your industry is growing and at what rate.

To get an accurate picture of the total impact of your industry, you could also survey your area’s own production and post-production companies. Although these local companies may be reluctant to release their financial information, if you assure them that their reports are confidential and will only be released as part of a total figure, you will probably be successful. Again, your only agenda is to communicate the value of the industry and whatever support that garners will support those local production and post-production companies as well.